Resumen:

This paper uses an analytical model to examine when it makes sense to
provide incentives to innovators to adopt a new product. The model allows for separate
segments of innovators and imitators, each of which follows a Bass-type diffusion
process. InterestiThis paper uses an analytical model to examine when it makes sense to
provide incentives to innovators to adopt a new product. The model allows for separate
segments of innovators and imitators, each of which follows a Bass-type diffusion
process. Interestingly “seeding” the market is optimal for a limited range of situations
and these do not appear to include those where there is a downturn in sales (chasm)
as sales move from the first to the second segment.
Research has frequently identified different segments of adopters of new products.
Categorizations include innovators vs imitators (Bass, 1969; Rogers, 1995; Mahahan et
al., 1990; Im et al., 2003), technophiles vs “normal” people, and business vs consumer
users. Further, considerable effort has gone into studying the influence of members of
the first group on the second.
This paper focuses on when, if ever, it makes sense for a manufacture of a new
product to “seed” the market by subsidizing a few early adopters to speed the adoption
process. The paper builds on earlier work by Kalish and Lilien (1983) which focused
on the impact of widely available government subsidies on the adoption of socially
desirable innovations (i.e. alternative energy sources) as well as the work of Jain et al.
(1995). Unlike that work, we concentrate on providing subsidies (here free goods) to
selective individuals in the context of a model which allows for separate segments of
innovators and imitators and nests the standard Bass (1969) model.[+][-]